Not completely, but enough to call my judgement into question when it comes to NaNoWriMo.

For the uninitiated, NaNo, (Na) for short, stands for the National Novel Writing Month. It takes place in November and as the name says the object is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. That works out to 1,666 words a day. EVERY DAY. Except for the day you have to write 1,667.

Why November? I don’t know. However, I know my account with the website says that I have been signed up for 14 years. So, that means for 14 years I have not written 50k words in one month. I have not written 14 novels, and that I have listened to the deadline of NaNo whistle over my head into oblivion.

This summer I went through a bout of depression. I’d like to say I fought like a champion. I fought it sorta. In the morning I worked on a story alteration and the rest of the day I’d watch my husband look for a job. There was the added bonus of wondering how long we would be without one, because when you’re in your 60s it’s a toss-up in the maintenance biz. Yes, it was stressful. When he finally got a job, I didn’t get over the bout for a while, so instead of drinking–too expensive–I watched You Tube videos.

I know that human beings are voyeurs, me included, but WOW!

courtesy rawpixels.com

Grocery Hauls and Meal Prep are my favorites. Who knew it could be so restful watching other people enumerate what they got at the grocery store? And there are the craft videos! Motivational videos, speeches by the notorious and the unknown. Home repair and home dec. The number of channels dedicated to Dollar Tree/Store/General is staggering.

Now I know what writers mean about wasting time on You Tube. I thought it was all cats. Nope. Cats and so much more.

My one caveat, aside from all the wasted time, is that these are not professionals and there’s no production team to point out faux pas. It’s a great exercise in grace. And a great way to see just what you can do with all that Dollar Tree swag!

Note: I wrote this blog post using Google Docs tool, voice typing. So no, not all the mistakes are my own.

In the winter you expect to be sick at some point cold flu heart attack from shoveling the driveway something is going to be follow you at some point during the winter months. So, here I am sick as a dog with some sort of gastrointestinal distress. we’ve changed our diet too low carb and I think that may have something to do with it. I don’t have any intention of running into the kitchen in scarfing down a bunch of crackers, but I think today is going to be a high water consumption day.

As an added bonus the dog is vomiting in the kitchen. Fun times

I’ve been messing around with dictation. I’m using Google’s typing with voice. it actually works very well considering it’s free and it’s Google. I suppose everything I dictate is being written down somewhere and kept for future reference just in case I offend all the wrong people. Which is completely possible.

I am having enough success in dictating to the computer that I think I will get a microphone. I have watched a couple of podcast of people who have gone to this method of writing and both say that having a decent though not terribly expensive microphone can make all the difference in the accuracy of the text that you wind up with. Next paragraph

I’m not sure I’m ready to try and write a story this way. with voice typing there is a limited amount of formatting commands that are at your disposal. I don’t want to have to edit for a longer. Then I am writing. Yesterday, I wrote a 3000 word outline of a short story I’m working on and that went very well but the text was very garbled. part of that is that there are a lot of names that even with the names loaded in Google’s dictionary for my account the typing app doesn’t seem to recognize. My hope is that a microphone will solve that.

Above I mentioned a short story I’m working on,. this will a be the second short story. The first one I got four thousand words into and realized that it’s a great story but it’s not going to fit in the Anthology it’s 4. But at least I have four thousand words on what will probably be a novella length peace. The new outline is for a story that I have been noodling with for a while. all I have to do is make myself go light and funny and stay out of the dark corners. that’s hard since it’s in the corners where we always where I always seem to find the most interesting things to play with.

The gastrointestinal distress is burbling a lung and I have to go and I have to go and relieve some stress.

I’m thinking about just posting this as it is without editing out all of The Oddities of Google’s voice typing. it’s actually a lot like hurried texting. I’ll think about it. Later

NOTE: (This note IS edited.) That wasn’t bad for a meandering, unscripted mind dump. And it sounds somewhat like me. I have a tendency to edit the original voice right out of things. I tried WORD’s dictate feature earlier. It has fewer commands than Google Voice Typing. If I keep dictating, I think I see having to buy some software in my future.

For a while I have been working to arrange a move for my mother. There are lots of moving parts and I’m not all that good at multitasking these days. To keep my sanity, I have been working on a new story. I finally got far enough in and was confident I would keep with it, so started posting the story on Beyond Austen. Captain Wentworth’s Guide to Romance and Travel: Lyme Regisis Persuasion without Louisa Musgrove’s fall from the Cobb. This past week I was in the trenches of packing boxes, paper, tapes, and Sharpie markers. Wednesday is the day I had chosen to post and so a week ago I put the flash drive in my computer to retrieve the post, and, VOILA! The drive was emp-ty.

Not a crumb remains.

A few years ago, I took Laura Hile’s loss of thousands of words in a computer crash as a warning and started keeping all my writing on flash drives. A couple of years after that I starting getting serious about organizing my writing, graphics, and private business. Yes, indeedy, I did.

So much for my trying to be grown-up.

I’m thankful for two things: that I was hip-deep in real life and not focused on my writing, and that it took several days to realize that the aforementioned story wasn’t the only thing on the drive.

I’ve now officially lost one whole novel, two partial–each hovering around 175 pages–several outlines of novel ideas, and countless graphics I had created for this and other blogs, and several book covers.

There were many family photos as well, but I have found them on other drives and online haunts of mine.

I am home now and have signed up for an automatic, online, cloud storage service.

Lessons learnt: exhaustion keeps you from going ballistic when the unthinkable happens, and back up your back ups. And then back it all up again.

When you go to a doctor, they hand you a list of medical maladies to confirm or deny. For me depression is always on the menu. It’s the same for my mother. This past month I made the rounds of physicals and appointments connected with her newly-diagnosed diabetes and had to tick the DEPRESSION box a number of times. It was a gentle reminder that depression is kind of an heirloom in the sitting room of my life.

Decades ago when I started writing, a real knock-down-drag-out broke on a Persuasion discussion board about whether Anne Elliot was depressed and should be medicated. Those who thought she was made a good case for Prozac. Who wouldn’t want a few good mood-altering drugs with Sir Walter as your father and provider?

The other camp was less convincing. They were passionate that Anne wasn’t depressed but they had no arguments as to why they believed this. In fact, it all seemed to hinge on the fact that she still loved Frederick — as if a tall handsome Captain of the Line was the perfect antidepressant — and that … well … heroines don’t get depressed!

If this is the case, that heroines are immune, I am screwed.

All the memes that shout we have to be the heroines of our own life stories are not for me. And, if love is the antidote, I obviously don’t truly love my husband of 37 years, my kids or my grandkids. I AM the heartless twitch many suspect.

The worst part about my depression is it causes my emotions — except anger — to fade and recede. That makes writing tough. It’s nearly impossible to write a compelling love story when all the feelings are just a whisper away from my fingertips and keyboard, and all the actions of love are shadows in the gloaming.

MY latest thought is to write Anne depressed.

How fun would that be?

Still, it’s an idea and those have been thin on the ground for a while now.

What do you think? Anne and Frederick meet when they start going to the same therapist? Or meet in group therapy perhaps? Think of the trust building exercises! They are paired up for a depressives retreat by a famous mental health guru who is in actuality a serial killer.

Okay, we’ve gone from deep, thoughtful romance to a Criminal Minds episode. I’m not depressed, just unable to focus.

Anyway, have a great weekend. And let me know, Anne and Frederick moving slowly carefully towards the light of love or running for their lives with the sound of chainsaws in the background!

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Yes, I am working. See …

NaNo went kaput. November was the month ALL my tech blew up in my face so Persuasde Me Again is still a dream.
Nobody Will Want Her is on Beyond Austen. It is finished. It can be done!The Lovers' Ruse is coming out in one day in the A Very Austen Valentine Anthology. It's available on Amazon for pre-order now.